Group activities and breakout spaces during synchronous sessions are a great way to divide up your session and get your students collaborating with their peers to boost engagement and understanding. Group work also encourages the sharing of different lived experience and opinions, as well as encouraging students to work with peers beyond their usual social circle in the classroom.

Below is some information and guidance about using group work during sessions as well as some examples of existing practice within the university.

When setting up group activities, it’s important to remember to give clear instructions, particularly if each group is doing something slightly different from one another. As with any activity, consider how the group task fits into the wider learning taking places (constructive alignment) and we recommend following an approach such as TAO (Timing, Action, Output) for the task. However, there are some additional factors you need to consider and make clear to your students when setting up group activities:

• Group size: What size groups will work best for the planned activity and its intended output? Groups of only 2 or 3 may mean you have too many groups if, for example, you want students to present back to the class within the same session. Larger groups can be more effective when it comes to projects and presentations; however, large groups may also result in too many voices and make it difficult for groups to agree on a particular approach or idea. Think about what will work best for your purposes and set your students up for success.
• Selecting groups: Are you going to allow students to choose their own groups or will you choose the groups in advance? Working with a familiar group can boost students’ confidence; however, selecting the groups yourselves opens your students up to a wider range of voices and experiences within the class, moving them beyond their usual social circles.
• Instructions: Do all groups need the same instructions or do you need to tailor the instructions for each group’s specific output?

As the tutor, it is important that you are checking in with students during these group activities to ensure that students are staying on track with the assigned task, have correctly understood the instructions, and to give them the opportunity to ask any questions they may have. It is therefore important that you make your way around the room (or virtual rooms if using breakout rooms in Teams) to speak to each group and see how they’re progressing. Doing so shows students that you value the work they are doing and helps to keep them engaged and motivated to complete the task.

As noted in the previous section, it’s important to keep students aware of the time they have to complete the tasks. It’s therefore important to give students a reminder of how long they have left; for example, depending on the length of the task, you may want to let them know when half the allocated time has passed or when they have only 5 or 10 minutes remaining. Such reminders can often help prompt students into action, but also help them to develop their own time management.

All students are different, which means that some groups are likely to work more effectively than others. If a particular group is struggling, think about the sort of questions you can ask them to encourage them in the right direction, or whether you have any examples to demonstrate the sort of output you’re looking for. This may be something you want to prepare in advance so that you are able to easily find and show them as needed. If you find that all of your groups are struggling, it may be an indicator that you need to reflect on the difficulty of the task or the clarity of the instructions provided and adapt them going forwards.